


though a change has taken place

by potter



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Cats, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-11 14:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15974510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potter/pseuds/potter
Summary: It's been six days, three hours, and forty minutes since Wonwoo has looked at him.(Soonyoung had thought it would blow over. Why, he couldn't say.)





	though a change has taken place

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [what happens to a memory that does not stay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602508) by [timber (calculus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calculus/pseuds/timber). 



> title from [strings that tie to you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EKwGS8dHmo)

It takes a few days for Soonyoung to notice.

Ordinarily he wouldn’t be so oblivious, but it’s been that kind of year. Between the tour and the repackage and the – and everything else, it’s understandable (he tells himself) that some things slip through the cracks. And after all, in those first few days, he was avoiding Wonwoo as much as Wonwoo was avoiding him.

It’s not so unusual, that, not on the surface. Wonwoo is Soonyoung’s best friend, but Soonyoung as a lot of best friends. He can surface from days or weeks of working nonstop without talking to anyone but Jihoon, or spending all of his free time messing around with the kids, to realize that in the interim Wonwoo has decided to start writing poetry, or is learning Mandarin, or has dyed his hair blond without telling anyone in management.

Wonwoo has never held it against him. Soonyoung tires to do the same whenever Wonwoo’s world similarly narrows to Mingyu, or Jisoo, or the inside of his own head.

So it happens: and a few days go by where Wonwoo pulls Mingyu back by his shoulder when he sees Soonyoung in the elevator, and Soonyoung pretends to be _fascinated_ by Seungkwan’s jokes when Wonwoo gets within earshot.

It’s just their normal orbit: a little off-tilt but bound to eventually come back to center.

But then it keeps happening.

Soonyoung enters the room; Wonwoo mutters something about a shower.

Soonyoung asks if anyone’s seen his charger; Wonwoo points at the couch without looking up from his phone.  
Soonyoung moves to correct his posture; Wonwoo flinches away, as if burned.

 

It’s this last one that really clues him in.

Dance practice, one AM: they’re coming up fast on the music video shoot, and it’s still not clicking. They’ve been at it for five hours. It’s complicated choreography, and Soonyoung’s proud if it, but he’s not getting anything back.

He’d feel bad, but the truth is this shouldn’t be so hard. Mistakes happen, especially running so hot without a break in months, but these are rookie slip-ups, things they should have left behind years ago. It’s hot outside, and Soonyoung’s feeling mean, and so he tells them so. Sweat and low-grade frustration hang heavy in the air. Even Chan and Junhui are starting to glower.

“Fifteen minutes, okay? Then we can stop.”

“You said that three hours ago, hyung.” Seokmin’s on the floor, curled up in a little DK ball. His shirt is soaked through. “I can’t believe you lied to us.”

“Don’t poke him, he’ll keep us here all night.” MIngyu probably would have kept his voice quiet, but he’s too tired for manners. The rest of them snort; Wonwoo, who’s sprawled out beside Mingyu, joins in. The back of Soonyoung’s neck heats up.

“Thank you for volunteering, Mingyu-yah,” he says sweetly. “Let’s run through hip-hop unit’s section again, okay?”

 

He dodges Seungcheol’s half-hearted swat, and the grumbling eventually loses out to pig-headed pride – his bandmates might hate him right now, but they hate mediocrity more. Soonyoung watches with silent mostly-approval as they move through the sequence with more and more confidence. They all have their own individual tics, but they usually self-correct half a second before Soonyoung has to swoop in. He touches Hansol’s shoulder, which lowers immediately. He lifts Mingyu’s chin a half-inch, and matches his tired grin.

He brushes his palm against Wonwoo’s back-

And Wonwoo _jerks_ , going rigid like recoiling from a viper.

Soonyoung flinches, as though he’s just been bitten himself.

The music hasn’t stopped. Nobody else has, either. Wonwoo doesn’t even acknowledge it, just folds his body into the correct posture and continues on. He’s flawless, the way he moves – Soonyoung can’t find anything else to criticize, although that doesn’t stop him from keeping his eyes trained on Wonwoo even as Hansol falls a beat behind, even as Seungcheol loses the rhythm entirely. He doesn’t look away.

Wonwoo doesn’t meet his eyes once.

 

(It’s been six days, Soonyoung will realize, since Wonwoo has looked at him.)

 

He lets everyone else leave before him. Junhui offers to stay behind, but he’s swaying where he stands, and it doesn’t take much for Soonyoung to shoo him away.

It’s late, too late. Soonyoung’s swaying, too, but he’s spent most of the night as drill commander, and there’s a bright nervous energy that’s gonna keep him up if he doesn’t exhaust it out. It’s been there for a few days, actually, lurking in his bloodstream: he couldn’t say for certain when it started up, but if he let himself think about it for more than a moment he’d probably be able to guess.

(“You’re _drunk_ , Jeon Wonwoo.”

“You’re drunk, Kwon Soon _young_.”

The thrum of crickets; laughter, amplified across the water.)

He doesn’t let himself think. Instead he runs the choreography, just himself, over and over. His ankle starts to ache. _good_. Again and again, and again, and still that tight, scrunched-up ache, like growing pains in reverse. It’s still there when the night cleaner kicks him out; it’s still there when he tosses in his bed, resenting the hell out of Hansol’s peaceful snoring.

It’s still there in the morning when he tries to catch Wonwoo’s eyes and can’t, no matter how long, how pathetically he tries.

"I'm not - I'm didn’t mean- I’m sorry," he had said.

"Oh," Wonwoo had replied.

 

He thought it would blow over.

Why, he couldn’t say.

 

This is a lie. There is a lot that Kwon Soonyoung could say.

“I left a pair of headphones in your room. They were really expensive. I can’t ask you for them back and I can’t ask Seungcheol hyung for them back because he’ll just tell me to ask you. I stole Jeonghan hyung’s, but they broke, and now hyung is gonna kill me.”

“Last year when you were really tired - it was on that flight back from China with that super long layover and the baby was crying and we couldn’t sleep? You probably don’t remember, because you passed out right after, but you told me that the first time you saw me dance you thought I was already a celebrity and you didn’t believe Jisoo hyung when he said we were gonna be in the same group, and I think about that pretty much every day.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was never thinking.”

 

A week ago, he would have been able to count the number of people he’s kissed on one hand. Three of them were from before, when he only had the one name; one of them was a trainee who dropped out when her group got cut, and never replied to his texts after that; one of them was Jisoo, on a dare last winter.

Soonyoung doesn’t know how many people Wonwoo has kissed. He knows that Wonwoo is one of the most touchy people he’s ever met. It’s hardly a day goes by that he can’t be found octopus-sleeping all over someone, or absentmindedly Hannibal Lecter-ing one of the kids. Soonyoung has been told that it’s easy to mistake that for blind affection: there have been one or two people who’ve gotten their hearts sorely broken misinterpreting Wonwoo’s need to touch as a need for _them_.

Maybe it was Soonyoung’s fault for assuming it would be the same, when it came to the two of them; after all, nothing else ever was.

 

There’s a cat that hangs out behind the apartment. She doesn’t have a collar, but she’s sweet when you pet her and doesn’t seem like she has rabies.

When they first noticed her, her ribs were near poking through her ribs, she was so skinny. They’d meant to take her to a vet, but she ran away every time anybody came near, and when Seokmin tried to catch her in a pillowcase she vanished for about a week, and still hisses any time he comes near.

Lately, though, Soonyoung’s noticed that her fur’s getting a little shinier, and her eyes are a little brighter. Every time he sees her she’s looking a little further from death’s door.

“Oh,” Chan says, next time he mentions it, “that’s Wonwoo hyung – he feeds her every night, he named her, too, I think, she’s like his best friend.” He gives Sooyoung a weird look. “Why didn’t you know that, hyung?”

Because I’m an idiot, Soonyoung thinks. “Shh,” Soonyoung says.

 

Seungcheol, acting out of some weird in locus parentis guilt, has been enforcing regular family movie nights. He looks so exhausted/earnest about the whole endeavor that nobody has the heart to turn him down, and he buys them all popcorn too, so whatever.

Normally for shit like this, Soonyoung would claim the couch in the middle, wedge himself firmly in between Junhui and Wonwoo and bask in the aggressive physical attention. But when he gets to the other apartment Wonwoo is already curled up in the furthest armchair, his eyes glued to his phone and, by all appearances, ignorant to the world (or at least the Soonyoung-shaped part of it).

Soonyoung manages to play it off: he burrows into Junhui’s side like normal, and lets him and Seungkwan braid his hair into intricate knots without complaining once. He thinks he’s pulling it off. He only looks at Wonwoo five times, although who’s counting (he is). Wonwoo’s never looking back.

The movie is about unwanted love, and the surgical removal thereof. Wonwoo leaves halfway through.

 

(He doesn’t mean to hear this part. It’s just, Jeonghan wandered off and left his phone behind, and it’s been chirping angrily for thirty seconds, loud enough for Minghao to give them all his ‘annoyed aunt in a noisy theater’ look, and, as funny as that can be, Soonyoung’s not in the mood. Without waiting for the “would you like me to pause?” lecture which is undoubtedly hot in its heals, Soonyoung just grabs the phone and goes to find its owner.

“What do you want him to do about it?”

Jeonghan’s voice, coming from the kitchen. Soonyoung holds the phone out in front of him, ready to plead innocent or blame it on Sungkwan if anything seems tampered with, until-

“There isn’t anything he can do, hyung, I told you.”

Soonyoung stops dead.

“Did you guys actually talk about it, Wonwoo-yah? About, any of it?”

“I didn’t have to. The way he reacted…”

“That was then – he was surprised, it’s not, you don’t know for sure that he-“

“He apologized to me, hyung. I’m pretty sure he meant that.”

“You need to talk to him.”

“I can’t even _look_ at him! Every time I try to my brain goes, it’s like it goes numb. I can’t talk to him, I can’t even look at his face.”

“You can’t… look at him?”

“… Every time I do. Every time I try to I just see… Not his actual face, but from that night. Right after we- Right then. The way he looked at me, hyung. It’s the only thing I can see when I look at him. So I can’t.”

“- Oh, Wonwoo-yah.”

Soonyoung creeps back to the couch and wedges the phone between the cushions. Later, when Jeonghan blames Seungkwan, Soonyoung pretends to be asleep.)

 

It’s not like there weren’t hints. Soonyoung’s not stupid, and even if he was it would still be obvious. Maybe not from the outside, but Wonwoo is a subject Soonyoung could author entire academic articles on. The foods he likes, the interviewers he hates; _this_ smile compared to _that_ one, near but not exact synonyms only a native speaker would understand.

It helps, too, to have known him for most of his adolescence. To know the specific way his laugh changes, his shoulders stiffen, his eyes go bright but shifty; the way he’ll just stare, mostly unconsciously, and just keep on going when you notice – not so much bold as vacant - so that the brightness around his neck is the only way you’ll know for sure.

If Soonyoung had wanted to know, he would have known. But he was an idiot, and Wonwoo was his best friend. He smiled when he brushed the hair back behind Wonwoo’s ears, and laughed when Wonwoo swatted him away. If Wonwoo never said anything, Soonyoung wouldn’t have to, either. It was friendship, their brand of friendship; it was kindness. Kind to let him nurture love. Kind to be his friend, if only that.

 

Among Wonwoo’s many other talents is the ability to go completely and utterly invisible when necessary. This has usually worked out _great_ for Soonyoung (like when they still had three hours to go until their individual photoshoots but their manager wouldn’t let them go huddle in the car for warmth, so instead Wonwoo spirited them into the empty back office where they crouch on cold concrete and press their hands against the radiator-

Or when they missed curfew for the second time that week, and the door was unlocked but the night guard was unforgiving, they couldn’t afford any more strikes so they hid out in the stairwell, holding their breath when they heard his heavy boots clomping down the hallway and shudder-laughing against each other as they snuck their way inside-

Or when the pojangmacha shut down for the night but they were too wired to even think about going back home, so they smuggled a bottle out to a little bend in the river Wonwoo knows about where the streetlights don’t reach, this is the most daring they’ve been since debut and that’s sad, but it also makes them laugh, and they keep laughing and keep drinking so that by the time dawn’s about to hit Soonyoung is pressed so close against Wonwoo he can feel his heartbeat reverberate against his skin-

Which means he can feel it speed up when Soonyoung turns his head-

Can imagine it skip when Wonwoo says, _whispers_ his name-)

\- But now that it’s been turned against him, Soonyoung would trade any of those moments for just a second of Wonwoo, now.

Their lives being the freakshow that they are, it’s near-impossible to completely avoid one another, but somehow Wonwoo manages it. When the photoshoot director wants to pair them together, a sudden allergy attack has Hansol subbing in while Wonwoo recovers. When Junhui and Jihoon suggest a 96-line VLive, Wonwoo remembers that he promised his brother he would Facetime him, yeah, right now, that’s crazy, right?

Soonyoung’s starting to get used to Wonwoo’s absence more than the man himself.

It’s the days that they can’t avoid each other which are the worst, though. Because Soonyoung’s still trying, or pretending, or some mixed-up amalgamation of the two. Somebody told him once, when he was trying to enter Pledis, or right before they debuted, that he never knows when to give up. He’s always worn that as a badge of honor, but the way Wonwoo looks at him when he’s absolutely forced to, when he can’t spirit himself away by methods fantastical or otherwise-

It’s like Soonyoung’s not even there. Like there’s not even a face to grimace at. Like he can’t see him at all.

 

The repackage comes. The repackage goes. It’s been two months since the river. It’s been one month, four weeks and six days since Wonwoo looked him in the eyes.

The break creates ample time for Soonyoung to brood. This is the longest he’s gone without talking to Wonwoo. It’s the longest he’s gone without talking to a friend, period. He doesn’t know how to be in a fight, let alone one the other party refuses to acknowledge. He feels aimless, lost, adrift.

“Those are all synonyms,” Minghao says.

“Who taught you that word?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Gnghf.”

Minghao is Soonyoung’s favorite sounding board. Most of the time, like now, he’s either too distracted or disinterested to pay that close attention, which is just how Soonyoung likes it. Soonyoung’s hanging off the side of the couch, watching an upside-down Mingyu crash a car with spectacular force into a police officer. As blood splurts everywhere, his expression doesn’t change. Soonyoung takes that to mean he’s in a good mood.

“I’m not trying to avoid the subject,” he tells Minghao’s silence. “I just don’t know what to say to- this person. We’re not really _fighting_ , so I can’t ask to _stop_ fighting, because if I said that we would _really_ be fighting, because acknowledging it means we have to… acknowledge it- Does that make sense?”

Minghao blows up another car. Soonyoung takes that as a yes.

“I would apologize, you know I always apologize, Myungho-yah, but I don’t know what to apologize for. - I mean, I do, but. But apologizing says I wish it hadn’t happen. And I don’t wish it hadn’t. I wish I had been able to give a different answer, and I wish I hadn’t reacted the way I did, mostly, but this person is my friend, and I thought it would be good to let them just, do what they wanted to.”

A gangster wails. Minghao’s mouth twitches as he shoves a TV antennae through his gut.

“Maybe I did it because I thought it would be better, if they got it out of their system. Maybe they could just… get over it.”

On the television, Los Angeles burns. Minghao looks down at the destruction, a lone man triumphant.

“- I didn’t think I would kis- reciprocate… back. It was instinct, I think? And I told this person afterwards. Not that I regret it. It was nice. I was drunk. But it was still. Still nice.”

Minghao is silent, long enough for Soonyoung to wonder if he was talking out loud. Then: “You should just talk to Wonwoo, hyung.”

Soonyoung’s heart skips a beat, like an unsuspecting kingpin about to be chainsawed to death by a semi-international pop star. “What?”

A scream; one final explosion. Minghao’s character, covered in gore, flashes a victory sign. Minghao looks at Soonyoung. The pity in his expression makes Soonyoung want to crawl beneath the couch cushions and never, never come back up.

“It’s obvious. Wonwoo hyung and you. It’s completely obvious.” He turns back to the screen. “You should just talk to him.”

 

Soonyoung’s the last one out from practice that night. With the lull in between singles, he’s been able to go a little easier on everyone, although that doesn’t mean he’s going easy on himself. An extra hour of practice has him sweaty and sore - not entirely the bad kind of sore, just riding that fine line between content and agonized in the morning.

He’s about to head into the dorms when he notices that cat preening herself beneath the bushes. Her fur is clean, but tangled, and she’s skinnier than she was the last time he saw her.

He hesitates at the door. He smells. He wants a shower. He wants sleep.

The cat mewls.

He spends thirty minutes trying to track down cat food: the lady at HomePlus seemed personally offended that he didn’t know the cat’s exact age and weight, but finally grudgingly handed over what she called a ‘serviceable’ brand, whatever that means. He’s feeling particularly altruistic as he jogs back towards the dorms; maybe if he wipes down his face he can post this to Twitter, a selfie with a cute cat is bound to get a few thousand retweets.

All thoughts of ratios vanish as he rounds the corner. The cat is still there, looking as forelornely adorable as ever. So is Wonwoo.

He’s looked up, startled, at the sound of footsteps. Soonyoung feels his face heat up - it’s 11pm, he’s holding a bag full of cat food, and he looks like he just ran a tropical marathon.

“Um,” he says. He holds up the bag, in what will later seem like an overly defensive gesture. “I got some. Some cat food. For the cat.”

Wonwoo looks at the bag. After an almost uncomfortably long while, he reaches out and takes it, careful not to let their hands touch. He smiles, not necessarily at Soonyoung but more in the general vicinity of his face. “Thanks. She likes this brand, I think.”

Soonyoung doesn’t dare crouch down. He tries to make himself small and nonthreatening, which is how they were taught to interact with irate bears that one time his middle school went on a camping trip. “What’s her name?”

Wonwoo lifts his shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t think she has one? Jeonghan hyung says I shouldn’t name her, because she’ll probably get hit by a bus or something.”

And it almost ends, then, because Soonyoung unconsciously smile-grimaces, and Wonwoo unconsciously smile-grimaces, and he’s so close to looking at Soonyoung with that same disbelieving, how are we in this band look they’ve shared so many times before-

But he catches himself just in time, and returns his gaze to the cat.

“But. Um. I call her Hana.”

“Pretty,” Soonyoung says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and because it’s true.

Wonwoo is silent. The cat purrs as he pets her.

They stand there in silence for a while. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable. Soonyoung is used to sharing silences with Wonwoo. It’s one of his favorite things about Wonwoo, that he just lets Soonyoung exist near him without demanding entertainment or validation - the simple pleasure of Soonyoung being near him is (was) enough.

Soonyoung feels a little of that now, that old familiar vibration in the air, a frequency he and Wonwoo were the only ones who could tap into. That’s probably why he does it, why he takes a step forward and says, “Hey-”

Wonwoo stands up. The air darkens.

“It’s late,” he says, still staring at the cat. “We should go- you should go. I’ll,” he hesitates, gestures to the bag. “Thanks for the food.”

“Alright,” Soonyoung says, because there isn’t really anything else to say. And then: “Wonwoo-yah-”

“It’s easier this way.”

The only thing Soonyoung can think to say, stupidly, impotently: “What?”

Wonwoo is staring at his own feet. Soonyoung can’t make out his expression, but he can guess: mouth set, eyes narrowed. Tongue thick in his mouth, but voice, somehow, steady. “If we keep pretending like- like nothing happened.” He pauses, could be swallowing, but Soonyoung isn’t close enough to know. “If I pretend like nothing happened. It’s easier this way.”

Soonyoung’s body feels light and leden at the same time; there’s nothing his mouth worth saying, and so he keeps quiet.

Wonwoo looks at him, or the nearest he’s come in ages, over his shoulder at a point near enough to Soonyoung’s ear to fool anyone else.

“Thank you for understanding.”

“I.” Soonyoung says. Then: “Yeah, Wonwoo. Whatever you want.”

He can’t offer anything else. Nothing Wonwoo would accept, anyway.

Wonwoo’s smile seems sincere, and, to Soonyong’s eyes, grotesque. “Goodnight, Soonyoung-ah.”

Wonwoo goes inside. Soonyoung stays.

 

The thaw is gradual, and not painless.

It’s a couple of weeks, but eventually, Wonwoo responds to him unprompted - even smiles in his direction, although it might have been at something Mingyu said.

And then it happens again, and again when Mingyu isn’t even in the room. Chan says something stupid, and Soonyoung gives the camera a look, and there’s a loud burst of laughter that’s sounds, impossibly, like Wonwoo. It’s such a foreign sound that Soonyoung has to look to check, and sure enough, even if Wonwoo isn’t really looking at him he’s smiling, smiling because of something Soonyoung said-

And it’s pathetic but Soonyoung will wear that badge with honor if it means Wonwoo will just start smiling for him again.

And he does. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly. He does.

(But it’s not the same.

And yeah, it’s like that shitty movie Seungcheol made them watch last weekend says, nothing stays the same, life means change, whatever - but that doesn’t mean he can’t want it, right?

Because Wonwoo is smiling, but it’s one that Soonyoung doesn’t know how to define: it’s not his Soonyoung, why are you being such an idiot smile, or his Soonyoung, rescue me from my entire life smile, or any of the other thousands of variations Soonyoung has spent years taxonifying.

This is some new, rare beast, and it takes Soonyoung a while to define it. When he does, he wishes he hadn’t. Because it’s the same smile he gives to their managers, and to their fans, and even to the other members, sometimes, but never, ever Soonyoung, not before now. Polite. Loving, even. The smile Wonwoo gives to friends.)

 

Wonwoo gets a girlfriend that spring. Soonyoung never meets her, but Wonwoo’s face lights up whenever his phone does. Seungcheol starts complains that they stay up all night talking on the phone - “it’s cute, but I have to sleep sometime, right?”

“Right,” Soonyoung agrees, not really listening. He isn’t watching Wonwoo, but he’s looking that way. When Wonwoo catches his eyes, he gives him a smile, big, and real, and unashamed.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i had such a hard time picking, i have like half a dozen different drafts based on other fics ;; this is kind of a weird remix - different pov, different genre, different everything, i just couldn't stop thinking about how this would translate into the real world and just...chased that waterfall. i hope you like it ♡ ♡ ♡


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